Songs From Spider Street (2 page)

No vegetation has grown near the house since shortly after Louis John
Willets finished his painting of it.

The memorial
painting, smeared across its huge canvas as if the image has grown there like
mould, can still be seen hanging lopsidedly in the local mortuary.

“Would you please try and do some work today instead of just vegetating
in front of the artwork?” Mr Kaltenbach’s sour voice cuts through Joseph’s
trance to bring him back to a world filled with the sharp tang of preservative
fluid. He looks around, shamefaced.

The old man’s
face is just inches from his, the lenses of his glasses almost opaque with
fingerprints and dust. His breath smells almost as bad as the chemicals. “That
car crash case that came in this morning needs a lot doing to it. The family
wants an open-casket viewing, you know that, don’t you?”

“Yes, Mr
Kaltenbach … sorry.” As he shuffles away, Joseph can hear the old man muttering
about having the painting removed before turning again. “And straighten that
damn thing up before you get back to work will you, please,” he snaps.

Joseph does
his best with the large canvas but it refuses to maintain its equilibrium,
always dropping to the right. He loves the painting with its tangle of sensuous
greens and earthy browns, far more inviting than its subject matter which sits
grimly at the side of the road out of town. He loves all Willets’ work and the
painting is one of the main reasons he’s refused the lure of better jobs over
the past two years.

Willets.
Small town celebrity and major artist. God knows why he never moved away from
this place, thinks Joseph, while secretly feeling glad that the painter chose
to stay.

Joseph is removing his apron when Kaltenbach creeps in.

“Very nice.
Good work, Joseph.” The old man almost smiles, peering at him through his
muddied lenses, as he stands over the woman’s reconstructed body. “I know what
you’re thinking. I don’t compliment you often … well, compliments cost money,
you know,” he says before breaking into a dry, cackling laugh.

Joseph smiles
weakly, unsure of what to say.

“Well, I’m
off home. Lock up on your way out,” Kaltenbach instructs.

He waits
until the old man shuffles out, the scuff marks of his shoes on the ancient
tiles forming glyphs of despair. A secret language that perhaps no-one cares to
decipher. Certainly not Joseph.

He walks
slowly into the office, which is never locked. The old man lost the key over a
year ago and refuses to have another lock fitted. This is Kaltenbach’s small,
secret world and he takes comfort in its shrunken gloom. He has no way of
knowing that his most precious secret has relinquished itself long ago,
betraying his trust to another.

Joseph
carefully slides the knife blade into the narrow space above the lock. The
blade dances to and fro half-a-dozen times before he hears the small sound he
has been waiting for.

The drawer
slides out smoothly and he slips his fingers underneath the piles of forgotten
invoices and dubious newspaper clippings. He has done this so often that his
fingertips can almost dispense with the gift of memory. The faint, bitter scent
of aniseed reaches him as he lifts free the large brown envelope.

Putting it
down carefully, he slips open the flap and slides out the precious contents,
placing them side by side on the desk.

Two rare
prints by Louis John Willets.

Joseph has
seen them many times before, almost every evening, but they never lose their
power to delight and mesmerise him. He doesn’t know how the old man got them or
how much they had cost him but, along with the painting, they are the real
reason he stays in his job. His own almost-private art gallery.

The bitter
scent is much sharper now, as always, rising from the surface of the images
lying before him. His eyes are inevitably drawn to the one that he places on
the right hand side, as if that is its rightful place.

It depicts
the head and shoulders of a woman. Stretching away behind her is a landscape
with some low shrubs and, behind them, the dim representation of the house. In
every picture, the house. Somewhere.

He stares
into the woman’s deep jade eyes, like no colour he’s ever seen, holding him and
inviting him into the picture. He dares to let his fingers trace the shape of
her face, fringed gently with long sage green hair. Surely that couldn’t be its
true colour. Every time he sees it he wonders why the artist has painted it
that way.

At the bottom
of the print sits the mark that told him this was print number three in an
edition of just 150. And the simple title ‘Leoni’.

Joseph knows
this was the artist’s wife. Willets was a notorious abuser of drink, drugs and
women, yet she had stayed with him for over a decade before her
uncommented-upon disappearance from the public eye three years ago.

Now no-one
knew where Willets was either. Shrunk back into the dim depths of his turbulent
canvases, maybe, or running headlong from an acid reputation that threatened to
swallow him whole.

Even the
lavish catalogue of the national museum’s huge retrospective late last year
gave no clues. The learned essays included contrived to be agonisingly vague
when it came to recent biographical details.

The romantic
buffoon in Joseph wants to believe Willets had used a portion of his enormous
riches to buy the silence of the art world while he slipped away to be secretly
reunited with his absent wife. He suspects the truth is more troubling and
possibly violent, knowing what he does of Willet’ ‘reputation.

The pungent,
acrid fragrance rising from the paper begins to make Joseph’s head spin. He presumes
it is something to do with the printing process but it seems strange he’s never
smelt it anywhere else.

Gingerly
picking up the prints, the second of which he ignores as usual, he carefully
slides them back into their home and tries to close the drawer. It resists him.
He tries again but something prevents it from closing fully.

He peers into
the narrow space. Unable to see any obstruction, he tries again but still it
resists. Running his hand along the underside of the drawer, he finds the
obstruction and pulls it free. A small, card-backed envelope.

He opens it
and removes the single photograph it contains. The woman from the print smiles
up at him, her arms wrapped around a younger version of his employer. Slightly
behind them and to one side stands the famous painter, his left hand stuffed
deep into his pocket while the other clutches a bottle of bright green liquor
to his thigh as he squints in the bright sunlight. The rocky coastline gives no
clue as to the photograph’s location.

Joseph draws
in his breath slowly. Leoni is Willets’ wife, yet here she is with her arms
wrapped blissfully around a smiling Kaltenbach as if they are lovers, while
Willets’ bearded grimace betrays his deep unhappiness. Joseph begins to
understand the price the old man might have had to pay for his precious prints.

The following day Joseph sees his elderly employer as a mystery made
flesh rather than just the marginally benevolent tyrant of the workplace.

 What he
wants above all is to question Kaltenbach about his relationship with the
painter and his wife. But as far as the old man is concerned, it is a
relationship that Joseph couldn’t possibly know about. Joseph’s day drags past
at an even slower pace than usual, and the comings and goings of the mortuary
take on the colours of interminable finality.

As the
evening comes, Joseph is more eager than ever for the old man to leave and go
home or to a bar or wherever he goes. Joseph doesn’t want to know but he is
desperate for the old man to be gone.

 Making a
pretence of sweeping up, he hovers near Kaltenbach’s door. The old man has
someone with him, he can hear voices through the door, so he wanders off to
occupy himself with a string of pointless tasks only to return 20 minutes
later.

As he
approaches the door, Joseph can still hear the voices. One is the old man’s but
he doesn’t recognise the other. It is none of Kaltenbach’s regular business
contacts and is high and angry, possibly even that of a woman.

The door is
too thick to hear what is being said clearly, but Joseph can tell it is heated.
Finally, he hears things being thrown, smashing, followed by a short wail.

Now is the
time, he decides, pushing the door open. “Mr Kaltenbach, is …”

The old man
sits slumped in his chair, his glasses lying on the desk at his side and a
small glass in his hand. At the bottom of the glass is a small amount of a
thick-looking white liquid, while at Kaltenbach’s feet a broken bottle leaks a
jade green liquor onto the tiled floor.

Coughing at
the pungent, bitter-sweet smell rising from the spilt liquid, Joseph glances
quickly around the small room. The old man is alone. There is nowhere to hide
in the cramped office.

“I … I”
begins Joseph as the old man’s head jerks up. His red eyes shine out in his
pale face as a line of green-tinged drool heads towards his stubbled chin.

“What … what,
Joseph. What do you want,” he demands agitatedly.

“I thought
something was wrong, Mr Kaltenbach. That’s …” He stops and stoops to steady the
old man, who threatens to slide onto the floor. Kaltenbach tugs at his tie,
straightening it before pushing himself heavily to his feet.

“I am going
home,” he tells Joseph slowly. “Perhaps I’ll be left in peace there.”

Joseph doesn’t
know if the remark is aimed at him but merely says after the departing man: “I’ll
clear up the broken glass, Mr Kaltenbach. Are you sure you’re OK?” A vague wave
is his only answer.

As he clears
away the fragments Joseph picks up the largest piece, held together by the
label. Absinthe. He’d heard of it but he didn’t know anywhere where you could
buy it.

He remembers
reading something about it in an article on Willets which claimed it was his
poison of choice. He reads the label - aperitif anise, qualite superieure, 70%
volume alcool. Jesus! 70%!

If Kaltenbach’s
been drinking this he deserves pity, thinks Joseph. Concern that the old man
will be his own next customer drives Joseph into his coat and out onto the
darkened street. He heads in the direction of Kaltenbach’s home, hoping to
catch the old man up. After all, he can’t have gone that far, can he?

The empty
street seems to stink of the absinthe he has just been clearing up. He must
have some on his clothes, he thinks, but the smell seems to grow more insistent
as he goes.

Rushing down
a darkened arcade, its shops all displaying pinched fronts with little of use
in their windows, Joseph notices for the first time how few people there are on
the streets. The odd fugitive figure trudges past, looking ill and distracted,
but he’d expected to see more pedestrians this early in the evening.

Once he is
sure he sees the old man disappearing around a corner and hurries to catch him
up.

Rounding the
corner he finds himself in a short street with three possible exits. A lone car
dashes past the end of one street. Joseph decides to follow his instinct and
heads for the farthest street.

Around the
corner, just out of reach of his eyes, there are voices. A couple whispering
urgently in words of love or anger, possibly both. Could one of them be
Kaltenbach’s? Sometimes it sounds as though there are three voices.

He rounds
another corner with quick caution, the street stretches ahead emptily. The
voices still outpace him, murmuring down the dark street and around the next
turning before he can catch them, stretched shadows sneaking after.

His ears
strain ahead of his progress along the paved way. He is certain that one of the
voices
is
familiar but it does not belong to someone he has been close
to.

He leans
against a darkened shop window as his breath comes shorter. A glance shows him
small glittering objects in the dim light. They sit enticingly behind a
yellowed cellophane blind, rare shells shining from their half-submerged cave
of secrets. Just the sort of things he’d be interested in buying if the shop
was bright with activity.

Pushing
himself upright, his pursuit continues as the voices, more distant now,
threaten to reveal both their identities and secrets. Could their jealousy
really be ready to drop away?

His pursuit
is frustrated by the vagaries of town planning or the absence of lighting time
and again.

Only when he
realises he is heading out of town, away from where his employer lives, does he
pause. Yet he is sure the old man is ahead of him. A mixture of curiosity and
concern drives him on.

The trees conceal whoever lies ahead of him, yet he still hears their
voices. Their constant debate and his pursuit has lasted over an hour, yet he
has not caught sight of them once.

When the
trees begin to thin, he finds himself struggling through thick clumps of
shrubs. They are strewn all down the hill and their pungent fragrance is almost
overwhelming.

He looks up
and is met by the sight of the Willets house. The shrubs stop several dozen
yards short of the dwelling, as if the soil from there on is poisoned, unable
to support them.

Joseph peers
through the darkness, struggling to make out whether there are one, two or
three figures heading quickly towards the house.

Only after he
hears the large front door slam emphatically does he pluck up the courage to
advance the last few yards to the house. He circles it, hoping to peer in
through one of the windows at what goes on inside but none are lit. Finally, he
makes his way around to the front door again.

Even though
he heard it slam, when he pushes against it, it opens. Perhaps someone has left
in the time he took to search around the house, he thinks.